Humanity is on the threshold of unprecedented
opportunities to promote peace and accelerate human development. Yet, as in
the past, our vision of these opportunities is obstructed by conceptions and
attitudes inherited from a bygone era. To fully appreciate the emerging
opportunities, we need to more clearly comprehend the events of the past two
decades that are the seeds from which these opportunities spring.

Restructuring the UN

The formation of the International
Commission on Peace & Food was conceived in 1987, a time when mutual
suspicions, escalating military expenditure and confrontational Cold War
rhetoric blinded the world to the possibility of radically transforming the
global security environment. Yet, fuelled by the bold initiatives of Mikhail
Gorbachev, by the time ICPF conducted its first meeting on the border of the
rapidly vanishing Iron Curtain at Trieste in September 1989, the Berlin Wall
had fallen, Cold War hostilities had melted, and the prospect of ushering in
a more peaceful and prosperous world for all seemed within reach. The
euphoria of those heady days generated high expectations of a peace dividend
that would help to wipe away much of the world’s suffering.

At the same time, the withdrawal of
the confrontation between East and West resulted in a gradual shift of
attention from the threat of imminent global self-destruction to lesser but
very real problems, among them – the unresolved danger arising from huge
stockpiles of nuclear weapons; some 26 on-going localized military conflicts
within and between developing nations, aggravated by increased trafficking
in small armaments; the persistence of hunger and malnutrition, especially
among the poorest populations of South Asia and politically unstable regions
of Africa; progressively rising levels of unemployment in both
industrialized and developing countries; and the turbulence and hardship of
political, economic and social transition in post-Communist Eastern Europe.
These challenges, coupled with the outbreak of the first Gulf War, the
disintegration of Yugoslavia, and the horrendous civil wars that wracked
Somalia and Rwanda, clouded the world’s vision of a brighter future.

It was in this context that the
Commission undertook five years of research that led to the publication of
its report in the fall of 1994. The report was released at official
functions at UN headquarters in New York, UNESCO in Paris, a global congress
of the World Academy of Art and Science at Minneapolis, and in the restored
capital of a reunited Germany at Berlin, then formally presented to the UN
Secretary General and to all UN member nations by a member of the
Commission, Her Majesty Queen Noor on behalf of the Government of Jordan.

In the decade since then, much has
happened to belie the expectations of post-Cold War optimists and pessimists
alike. On the positive side, the sudden emergence and explosive growth of
the Internet and the World Wide Web have fuelled a global revolution in
communication, education, economy and a wide range of human activities
reaching from corporate board rooms in North America to rural towns and
villages on every continent, abridging the time, distance and differences
separating countries, classes and people. The end of Apartheid in South
Africa completed a century-long struggle, ridding the world of a horrible
scourge. Democratic systems of governance characterized by the rule of law,
an independent judiciary and a free media replaced dictatorships around the
world. The establishment of the World Trade Organization paved the way for
expanded markets for both developing and developed countries, fuelled a
rapid expansion in World Trade, and wove strong bonds of interdependence
between erstwhile antagonists across the globe from the Chinese mainland to
North America. Larger private investment flows invigorated economic growth
and made capital more accessible to larger numbers of people than ever
before in human history. The European Union expanded to embrace newly
democratic countries and blazed a path right through the former heartland of
nationalism for the integration of the united peoples of Europe. Most
important of all, the erstwhile very real and imminent threat of global
confrontation and nuclear destruction radically diminished, spurred by
negotiations between Russia and USA that have led to a 75 per cent reduction
in the number of nuclear warheads stockpiled by both sides.

ICPF’s report projected a vision of
Uncommon Opportunities for rapid and radical advances in global peace
and development. Its central thrust is the inextricable linkage between
peace, employment, food security and human development. As peace is a sine
quo non for development, creation of employment opportunities for all is
essential for maintenance of peace and social stability, food security and
eradication of all forms of poverty.

The experience of the past decade
strongly supports the view that a more peaceful global environment is more
conducive for development. Military spending declined by a third in the
years immediately following the end of the Cold War, partly due to real cuts
in defence spending and partly due to the collapse of the Russian rouble and
changes in the value attributed to Soviet arms spending. These real gains
did not translate into a significant increase in foreign aid, which was what
many hoped and expected. But that does not mean there has been no peace
dividend. A comparison of the performance of the world economy over the past
two decades reveals that after an initial recessionary period of economic
dislocation, economic performance has improved on the whole in all regions
and almost all countries. According to IMF, the growth rate in emerging and
developing countries rose from 3.7 per cent annually during the period
1985-94 to 5.1 per cent over the following 10 years and is projected to
reach 5.9 per cent in 2005. In Sub-Saharan Africa, the rise was from 1.9 per
cent to 3.9 per cent and it is expected to reach 5.8 per cent in 2005. In
the former Soviet republics, growth has accelerated from 0.1 per cent to 4.1
per cent and projected to touch 6.6 per cent next year. These trends are
likely to continue throughout the decade. While foreign aid to developing
countries as a percentage of GDP has fallen by 50 per cent since 1990, it
has been offset to some extent by a 150 per cent rise in foreign investment.
In the least developed countries, foreign aid has declined by 24 per cent
but this has been offset by a 29-fold increase in foreign investment, so
that the combination of foreign aid and foreign investment as a percentage
of GDP has remained constant. If the rich countries, particularly USA, had
met the UN development assistance target of 0.7 per cent of GDP, progress in
improving the human condition in countries characterized by a high incidence
of poverty would have been faster.

These real and significant gains have
been offset and to a large extent obscured in our minds by the persistence
and aggravation of problems that constitute the other side of the post-Cold
War ledger. Far from vanishing, the nuclear danger has been aggravated by
the continued proliferation of nuclear weapons, the increasing danger of
these weapons falling into the hands of terrorists, and the stubborn refusal
of the existing nuclear powers to seize the opportunity to totally eradicate
this pernicious arsenal of self-annihilation. Reduced confrontation between
nation states has been followed by an aggravation of internal conflicts
within countries as well as a dramatic increase in threats of violence by
disenchanted minorities. Violent local conflicts continue to flare around
the world. Terrorist acts have intensified against civilian populations on
every continent. While the worst fears about rising unemployment in the West
have been dispelled, the challenge of generating sufficient employment
opportunities for all people around the world remains a pressing concern.
The rich-poor divide has increased within and between nations. Inadequate
job/livelihood opportunities resulting in inadequate purchasing power have
now become the most important cause of endemic and hidden hunger. Most
regrettable has been the failure to enhance the powers and strengthen
reliance on effective multilateral institutions. The emergence of the USA as
the sole superpower has brought with it a reduction in the role and
influence of the UN in international affairs, precisely at a time when the
world should be striving to build a viable multilateral cooperative security
system.

The Unfinished Agenda

The Commission’s report was never
intended to predict what would happen in the years to come, but
rather to project what could be made to happen by a concerted,
determined effort of the world community. The report highlighted many of the
opportunities that did emerge as well as some of the dangers that have grown
in intensity in the absence of effective action. The events of the past 15
years may not have followed the course predicted by either the optimists or
the pessimists, but they certainly confirm that this has been a period of
unprecedented opportunity for rapid progress – what Sri Aurobindo termed an
“Hour of God”. While the gains have been significant, all of us will
acknowledge that we have not taken full advantage of this opportunity to
build a better world. Though great dangers have receded, old and new threats
still loom large, demanding courageous action. The door remains ajar. The
hour is still in progress. There is still time and that time is now.
The world today has far greater opportunities that ever before, far greater
degrees of freedom within which to act to accelerate progress and eradicate
suffering. The Millennium Development Goals adopted at the UN Millennium
Summit in 2000 represent the essential minimum needs for building a stable,
secure, free and prosperous global community. We confront once again an
unprecedented opportunity and an unfinished agenda.

Disappointed by our failure to achieve
all that seemed possible or disillusioned by the emergence of new, more
dreadful challenges, some may feel prompted to curb mind’s contemplation of
the greater potentials, dispense with lofty plans and resign themselves to
the slower, circuitous pace of progress that characterized earlier periods.
That choice would be unfortunate. For everything in our experience of the
past two decades points to the fact that humankind is now capable of more
rapid and radical action to build a better common present and future for
all. We may have become habituated to the astounding magnitude of the events
since 1989 and still feel unsatisfied with the results, but we can no longer
deny that we collectively possess the capacity to create the world that we
choose to create. This is still the hour in which anything can happen,
provided we are determined to make it happen. It is not a question of
possibility or prediction, but of decision and determination to walk the
talk.

Peace & Security

§Nuclear Disarmament:
The threat of a nuclear holocaust remains very real so long as stockpiles of
these weapons remain in existence – their very existence constitutes a
threat – and so long as nations or groups insist on the prerogative of
manufacturing, possessing and using them. While the number of nuclear
missiles and bombs has been dramatically reduced, both the USA and Russia
retain thousands of such weapons. The number of nuclear weapons states has
increased and the threat of first use has been extended to Israel, the
Indian subcontinent and the Korean peninsula. South Africa and some former
Soviet republics have voluntarily relinquished their claims as nuclear
weapons states. Few realize that the catastrophic damage caused by the
atomic bombing of Japan at the end of World War II dwindles into
insignificance when compared with the destructive power and radioactive
fall-out that would result from the explosion of even the smallest nuclear
device today. Until the last nuclear weapon has been destroyed, the threat
of accidental or intentional usage remains very real and very serious. The
nuclear weapon states must come forward to fulfil the commitments made in
the non-proliferation treaties by taking active and immediate steps leading
to total nuclear disarmament by all powers within the shortest possible
time. Year 2005, which is the 60th anniversary of the atomic
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, presents a real opportunity for concrete
steps toward eradication of nuclear stockpiles.

§Cooperative Security System:
Ten years ago the Commission was adamant in
its call for a fundamental shift from a competitive to a cooperative global
security system. The present competitive system depends on the ability of
each individual nation to defend its own borders and interests against
external threats. Such a system necessarily demands massive investments by
each country in military capabilities. These investments are inevitably
perceived by other nations as real or potential threats to their own
security, thus fuelling compensatory escalation of military capabilities by
other states. Calls for disarmament alone cannot and will not eliminate the
problem. They must be complemented by concrete measures to establish an
alternative mechanism to ensure the security of nations. This is one of the
major reasons why expectations of a massive peace dividend have not been
fulfilled. World military spending has not declined significantly because
the competitive security paradigm remains in tact. Steps being taken by the
members of the European Union to build a truly cooperative security system
indicate the right direction for the world as a whole. It is no wonder that
the first such initiative comes in Europe, which has been the leader of
thought for the past 500 years – from the birth of modern science and
parliamentary democracy to nationalism, socialism and universal education –
and which has been working for the past five decades to evolve a viable
working model of fully democratic, voluntary supra-nationalism.

§Democratization of the UN:
The phenomenal advance of Europe’s
multi-dimensional unification is a clear indication that in future
international institutions will play a more important role than national
governments. But this can happen only to the extent that these institutions
are living proponents of democratic functioning and individual freedom. Ten
years ago ICPF called for the democratization of the United Nations by
abolition of the veto power in the Security Council, induction of new
members to make that body more representative, and establishment of
democratically-elected representative government as an essential condition
for membership or active participation in the UN system. The nexus between
democracy and prosperity is undeniable. The democratic revolution that has
so effectively penetrated Eastern Europe in recent years and extended its
roots in other regions must be taken to its logical conclusion at the level
of nations and at the level of international institutions.

§World Peace Army: The most far-sighted of ICPF’s proposals sought to
evolve a practical mechanism to promote the objectives of cooperative
security and democratic freedom. It called for the establishment of a World
Peace Army, to be constituted by and open to all democratic countries
willing to renounce the right to aggression against other nations and
willing to contribute personnel and resources to an international
multilateral military force capable of defending its members from external
threats. Such a mechanism, so long as it is inclusive, would provide a real
and viable alterative to national militarization, whether or not it was
constituted by or within the UN system. The success of NATO in maintaining
peaceful relations among the democratic states of Western Europe and North
America for more than half a century is a viable model which is limited
primarily by the exclusivity of its membership. The recent measures taken by
the European Union to constitute a European Army are evidence of the
practicality of establishing a similar mechanism open to all nations. The
unfortunate situation now witnessed in Iraq could have been avoided, if
ICPF’s plea for a World Peace Army had been heeded.

§Eradicating the Roots of
Terrorism: Terrorism is not new to the world,
but with the withdrawal of national rivalries between East and West,
violence by non-nation states has increased in intensity and is viewed as a
far greater security concern by the entire world. This has spurred an
unprecedented international effort to control and suppress terrorist
activity. But there is little hope of abolishing this menace without
simultaneously comprehending and addressing the root causes of terrorism in
the world today. In a sense, the human urge for violence has neither
increased nor decreased. It has simply shifted the field of expression from
confrontation between nation states to confrontation between powerful
governments and disenchanted, disenfranchised groups of individuals who
respond to the application of superior power by nation states with the
application of indiscriminate violence against the public-at-large.
Terrorism thrives in the absence of effective democratic institutions to
give voice to the will of its citizens. At the same time, lifting the
tyranny of state terrorism has itself become the occasion in some instances
for an outburst of violence by long suppressed groups.

Eradication of terrorism is possible, but it demands a
comprehensive and integrated approach and concerted, collective action. The
commercialization of the arms trade – which benefits some countries
economically at the expense of the security of all nations – must be subject
to rigorous monitoring and control by international agencies. Vested
economic interests that thrive on conflict must be placed under UN
surveillance and regulation. International institutions must be strengthened
to eradicate arms smuggling, narcotics, offshore money laundering and other
criminal activities that serve as seedbeds and instruments for terrorism.
However, no final solution to the problem of terrorism can be arrived at by
force alone. While terrorism is frequently attributed to religion and
ideology, it sprouts and thrives most readily among populations that lack
opportunities for gainful employment and economic development. Social unrest
is an expression of the upward aspiration of those who have been left out of
the political and development process or who feel threatened by the rapid
pace and stress of social change and inequity. Those who lack the
opportunity or the ability to labour intensely for their own upliftment
express their productive energies through the intensity of violence. The
international community cannot afford to be silent spectators of the growing
violence. Peace, democracy and development are inseparable and
interdependent. Liberal democracy and economic opportunity for all are
essential ingredients for winning the war against terrorism. Accepting the
spiritual principle which tells us that there is an element of truth even in
the most outrageous or misinformed viewpoint, we must not only vehemently
condemn but also sincerely recognize the unaddressed issues that underpin
the urge for violence. In this sense, terrorists crudely expose the mental
insincerity prevalent in international politics. Those who wield national
power must come to realize that force of compulsion will not bring about a
permanent reconciliation and amelioration of relationships in human affairs.
Superior power must bring with it a superior sense of fairness and a
commitment to constructive dialogue and action to attack the root causes of
terrorism. It must shed its own accretion of mental insincerity cloaked as
diplomacy. Then and then only these movements of violence will shrink and
finally disappear. The period following September 11th, as US
National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice put it, is one “not just of grave
danger, but of enormous opportunity.”

§Resolving Local Conflicts:
The Commission concluded that the end of the
Cold War made it possible to successfully resolve problems that had resisted
solution for decades, such as the many violent communal and ethnic conflicts
occurring in the world. The near total cessation of violence in North
Ireland during the past 10 years is proof that rapid progress can be made on
issues involving apparently intractable communal sentiments. This
achievement appears astounding to those who lived through the earlier
decades of religious violence and until recently found it nearly impossible
to imagine a mitigation of the conflict in the foreseeable future. We would
do well to examine closely this instance to draw lessons that may aid in
addressing those conflicts that continue to defy resolution.

The most striking lesson of the Irish experience is that
rapid development absorbs and dissipates the urge for violence. The dramatic
economic advancement of the Republic of Ireland – whose per capita GDP rose
within the past 20 years from less than 60 per cent that of UK to 95 per
cent in dollar terms and 130 per cent in terms of purchasing power parity –
has eliminated the disparity between Ireland and Ulster and fostered among
the Irish in both countries a sense of pride, an expansion of employment
opportunities, and a more focused channelling of social energies into
productive activities. Economic growth in the region was augmented by the
systematic efforts of the British government to eliminate the active
discrimination against the minority Catholic population of North Ireland in
housing and employment as well as the segregation of Catholic and Protestant
education. Violence has subsided, yet a political solution still defies the
policymakers, because some of the root causes of the problem buried far in
the past have not yet been adequately addressed.

A steady and concerted effort for permanent solution in
Ireland will demonstrate the possibility and provide the knowledge necessary
for addressing other intractable communal problems around the world. A
comprehensive approach to a permanent solution must include social,
economic, education and cultural elements. The principle illustrated here is
that long-standing military conflicts can be resolved by political
initiative and obstinate political conflicts can be resolved by economic
strategies rooted in the principles of equity and ethics. The opening up of
economic relations between the USA and China by President Nixon has made war
between the two countries almost unthinkable. There are no serious conflicts
in the world today that cannot be resolved through consultation, consensus
and ‘win-win’ formulas.

Full Employment

The fading spectre of nuclear
annihilation gave way in the 1990s to the rising spectre of chronic
unemployment. The end of the Cold War brought with it some wrenching
transitions, among them the break-up of the USSR and Comecom, the
reunification of Germany, the downsizing of defence manufacturers in America
as the result of reduced orders for war materiel, the collapse of Japanese
financial markets and onset of a decade-long recession, and displacement of
millions of migrant Asian workers following the invasion of Kuwait and the
first war in Iraq. These events violently disrupted expansion of the world
economy and creation of employment opportunities for an expanding labour
force in both industrialized and developing countries. Near panic levels of
concern rippled across the world during this period about rising levels of
joblessness, prompting one doomsday author to prophesize the ‘end of work’.
The situation became particularly acute in developing countries, because of
their predominately young populations and high population growth rates.

Trends and Prospects

ICPF refused to side with the
pessimists who viewed unemployment as a terminal illness spreading rapidly
through the entire world economic system. Its report presented evidence to
dispel the twin myths that technological development and trade were net job
destroyers. It traced the growth of employment opportunities through
the 20th Century, a century of unprecedented technological development and
commercial expansion, to show that this period has also been an era of
unprecedented growth in the quantity and quality of employment
opportunities. The report argued that the current surge in
joblessness was a temporary result of the mismatch between the rates of
surging population growth and expanding economic activity. It concurred that
rising levels of unemployment constituted a serious problem that needed to
be urgently addressed, but rejected the notion that it is an inevitable and
incurable disease which the world must resign itself to passively suffer and
endure. The Commission, therefore, developed and presented a comprehensive
strategy for job-led economic growth.

Over the past decade, changes in the
employment picture lend credence to ICPF’s perspective. The American economy
experienced a decade-long expansion, fuelling high levels of employment at
home, while stimulating job growth throughout East Asia, attracting a
massive influx of foreign technical workers and setting the stage for a
global outsourcing boom which is still in its infancy. Among the advanced
economies, unemployment declined from an average of 6.9 per cent in the
period 1985-94 to 6.5 per cent during the last 10 years. It fell by 10 per
cent in France, 25 per cent in Italy, a third in Netherlands, 50 per cent in
Spain and 70 per cent in Ireland. It is declining but remains 10 per cent
higher than the average for 1985-94 in Germany, which is still recovering
from the economic impact of reunification. The new market economies of
Eastern Europe are growing rapidly. But these positive trends are no grounds
for complacency. While they may dispel fears of an irreversible shrinkage of
the job market in OECD countries, the proportion of long term unemployed
remains at an unacceptably high 29 per cent of the total, indicating that
these countries have not yet evolved successful strategies to address the
issue. Left to itself, unemployment may continue to deprive large numbers of
people in these countries from enjoying basic economic rights, unless
concerted steps are taken to remove the perceptual and structural barriers
to full employment.

While data on unemployment levels in
most developing countries is of doubtful accuracy and recent data are
difficult to obtain, there is no question that the problem remains severe,
especially among youth and the educated. ILO estimated that at the end of
2000 approximately 110 million workers in developing countries, excluding
Central and Eastern Europe, were unemployed, most of them first-time
jobseekers. Unemployment rates among young workers are almost everywhere at
least twice as high as the average. In addition another 500 million workers
in the developing world earned less than a dollar a day. Although the growth
rate of the world's labour force is slowing down, approximately 460 million
additional jobseekers will enter the global labour force between 2000 and
2010, two-thirds in Asia. ILO has concluded that the prospects for an
improving global employment situation depend mainly on continued expansion
of the world economy. While that expansion is likely, economic growth alone
will not be sufficient to provide opportunities for sustainable livelihood
for all those who need it. Jobs or livelihood for all must be the bottom
line of all development, technological and trade policies. It will be
necessary for governments to elevate employment to the top of their policy
agenda and dedicate themselves to the vital task of achieving full
employment.

The Right to Employment

The Commission’s report called for
urgent action to address the problem of rising unemployment and presented a
comprehensive set of strategies designed to promote full employment in both
developed and developing countries. The centre-piece of ICPF’s
approach is the assertion that employment must be recognized as a
fundamental human right, the economic equivalent of the right to vote. As
the electoral franchise is the basis for the legitimacy and operation of
democracy, access to gainful employment constitutes the economic franchise
that lends legitimacy and functionality to a market economy. The
right to employment must be constitutionally guaranteed to enable all
citizens to exercise their fundamental right to food and health security and
a share in national well-being.

ICPF’s view called into question the
blind faith in the wisdom of the unregulated market that was prevalent
during the heady days of radical free-market economic doctrine following the
collapse of the Soviet system. Critics claimed that achievement of full
employment was impractical and therefore guaranteeing it was impossible. In
response, the Commission argued that the level of employment in any society
is the direct result of a nation’s laws, policies and modes of implementing
them, not the result of impersonal forces of nature beyond human control.
Employment is a product of human decisions and can be controlled. As the
world has made enormous progress in halting and reversing environmental
degradation, it can also eradicate the spectre of unemployment. What is
required is genuine commitment enshrined and enforced as national policy.
The Commission called on the nations of the world to recognize this right
and enforce this guarantee.

It is most appropriate that a meeting
of the Commission is taking place during November 2004 in India, where the
Government of India has proclaimed their recognition of this right and their
commitment to enforce it through an act of parliament. This meeting provides
an opportunity to review the technological and public policy instruments now
available to fulfil the human quest for “education, health, food, water and
work for all and forever.”

Strategies & Recommendations

Recent developments may be sufficient
to dispel dire forecasts of a world without work, but by themselves they are
not adequate to address the real and pressing need to accelerate job
creation throughout the world, the essential condition for the world’s
billion poor to escape from poverty. For that, the Commission argued that
concerted action is both necessary and possible to immediately improve
employment opportunities for the poor. Chapter Four of this report presents
a comprehensive package of strategies for both industrialized and developing
countries that are as relevant and valid today as they were at the time of
publication.

In order to document the potential for
accelerated job growth, ICPF conducted a special country study of India in
1991 and drew up a strategy for creating 100 million jobs in the country
within a decade. The strategy, which focused on utilizing agriculture and
agri-business as engines to stimulate rural incomes and employment
opportunities, was endorsed and adopted by the then Government of India, but
not implemented for a variety of reasons. A review of this strategy one
decade later indicates that the potential for achieving full employment in
India is fully alive and the current Government’s commitment provides the
right circumstances to achieve it in practice. This will also serve as an
example and model for other countries to emulate. Backed by this commitment,
the main elements of a successful employment strategy for India have been
identified in a separate report prepared for the New Delhi meeting. The
strategy focuses on giving an income and employment orientation to Indian
agriculture, increased support for expansion of enterprises in the informal
sector, broadening the on-going self-help group revolution and fully
extending it to agricultural operations, upgradation and expansion of the
country’s vocational training system, promotion of entrepreneurship and full
utilization of information technology as a catalyst for development.

Prospects and Emerging
Opportunities

Viewing the global employment
situation as a whole, there are strong grounds for confidence in a brighter
future.

§Resurgent Asia: The nations of East Asia, which went through rapid
expansion followed by a major financial crisis, are back on the growth path.
The Japanese economy is once again growing and creating new jobs, both at
home and abroad, especially in China, which has become the largest
destination for Japanese foreign investment and a key supplier base for
Japanese manufactured goods. China’s economy continues to expand at more
than eight per cent annually and India’s may soon achieve that rate of
growth. Fuelled by very rapid expansion of automotive, financial services,
IT, pharmaceuticals and telecommunications, India has emerged as one of the
fastest growing economies in the world, the third largest destination for
foreign investment, and a key player in IT and IT-enabled services.
According to a recent study, by 2040 China and India will be the first and
third largest economies in the world. Together with Russia and Brazil, they
could account for a larger portion of world GDP than today’s six largest
industrialized nations. Population, which was perceived as a liability not
long ago, now appears to be an asset. In reality, population, like nuclear
energy and so many other things, is neutral. Its value depends on what we
human beings make of it.

§Changing Demographic Profile
of the West: Demographic studies indicate that
steep declines in the growth of population in Europe, Japan and USA will
create acute labour shortages and unprecedented long-term demand for
migration of foreign workers or transplantation of work to developing
countries. UN and other studies estimate that Europe would have to accept
150 million new immigrants over the next 25 years in order to maintain the
present levels of working population and Japan would need to admit 600,000
immigrants annually for the next 50 years in order to maintain the size of
its working population at the 1995 level. The US labour force is projected
to stop growing by 2013. These findings support the view of the India Vision
2020 report that “This trend will further accelerate the outsourcing of
production of goods and services to locations where infrastructure, ease of
doing business, quality, costs and availability of labour are most
attractive, which will be beneficial for many labour surplus countries like
India.”

§Expanding World Trade:
Trade is playing an increasing role in the
economic growth of developing countries. Economic integration with the
global economy has become a compelling necessity for every country. The
share of trade in global GDP rose from 12 per cent in 1970 to 29 per cent in
2001. While the effects of expanding world trade on employment are complex
and can lead to displacement of workers and destruction of jobs in some
cases, available evidence strongly indicates that the overall impact of
freer trade on the global economy will be to promote significantly faster
growth of employment opportunities. The emerging liberalization of textile
trade in 2005 is an example of the potential positive impact of freer trade.
In India the textile industry provides employment to 18 per cent of the
entire workforce, accounts for 8 per cent of the country's GDP, 17 per cent
of its manufacturing capacity, and 27 per cent of its export earnings. A
recent projection indicates that with the lifting of quotas under the WTO
Agreement on Textiles and Clothing in January 2005, India’s textile exports
could rise from the current $16 billion to $40 billion by 2010, creating as
many as 12 million new jobs in the process, five million jobs through direct
employment in the textile industry and another seven million jobs in allied
sectors. The global manufacturing strategies of multinational corporations
will further spur the exponential growth of contract manufacturing
opportunities in developing countries. Already China exports $300 billion a
year in manufactured products, while Taiwan and Mexico export more than $140
billion each. According to a recent study, India has the potential to create
25 to 30 million new jobs in the manufactured exports sector.

§Shift to Services: One would hardly expect to find the decline of
manufacturing jobs as a source of employment opportunities, but historical
data supports this conclusion. Fear over the destruction of manufacturing
jobs due to adoption of capital intensive technology has been prevalent for
the past 100 years. Every new technology that automates a process or
increases worker productivity has been perceived as a threat to the future
of work. The reality has proved to be quite different. Technological
development propels a spiral of economic development that creates many more
jobs than it destroys. The most striking testimony to this fact is the
history of employment in USA, arguably the country that has most readily and
fully adopted new technologies over the past century. Employment in
manufacturing and mining grew to a peak of about 40 per cent of the
workforce after World War II before beginning its downward spiral to 15 per
cent by 2000, about the same proportion as in 1850. Yet, during this same
period total employment in America has expanded phenomenally, from a mere 13
million workers in 1870 to 68 million in 1955 and more than 136 million in
2002. In spite of all the automation and all the export of jobs to lower
wage economies, the percentage of the American population employed has
continued to rise over time.

Several factors are responsible for this result, among
which population growth and technological development are most prominent.
Rising levels of technological sophistication certainly displace workers in
most fields of manufacturing. But at the same time they stimulate growth of
employment in many different ways – increasing demand for the products thus
manufactured by a factor of 10, 100 or even 1000 fold as in the case of
automobiles, TVs, cell phones and computers; increasing the demand for
research workers to support technological innovation and for teachers to
meet the rising demand for education; and rising living standards, which
increases consumption of other goods and services due to the falling prices
made possible by rising productivity. Over the past two decades the US
economy lost nearly 4 million manufacturing jobs but added a net 37 million
jobs through expansion of the service sector, which now accounts for 84 per
cent of total employment. It is time that we stop resisting or resenting
this trend, but rather strive to adapt by shifting our focus toward those
fields of employment which are most directly stimulated by technological
innovation. Export of commercial services already accounts for 20 per cent
of world trade. The shift from manufacturing to services is a positive and
inevitable expression of the elevation of human activity from the physical
to the mental level, which is the central reason for the phenomenal rise in
global living standards over the past century.

Rich nations have become rich through a shift of workers
from the primary farm sector to value-added, non-farm secondary and tertiary
sectors. Poverty and hunger persist so long as a majority of the population
depend upon the routine operations of farming for their livelihood. This is
also the cause of the growing feminization of poverty in developing
countries. Today’s developed nations arrived at their present position by a
long, slow migration from agriculture to manufacturing to service sector,
but that does not mean developing countries must follow the same path. The
growing demand for services in the developed world coupled with rapid
strides in telecommunications has created the possibility of skipping steps
to abridge the development process. Even within developing countries,
surging demand for education, health care, tourism, communication, financial
and retail services has opened up opportunities that were available to the
developed countries only at a much later stage in their development.

§Outsourcing: During the last decade enormous attention has been
focused on the lucrative employment potentials generated by Information and
Communication Technology (ICT), particularly the high paid jobs in computer
software and hardware and the less technical jobs in business process
outsourcing. Countries such as India have shown that they can leapfrog into
the technological vanguard by developing qualified human resources to meet
the ever-expanding shortage in these sectors. Information Technology and
IT-enabled services stand out as the most important new fields of employment
to emerge since the popularization of the automobile. While the Commission’s
report anticipated the importance of the information superhighway even
before the World Wide Web radically transformed global communications,
information exchange and commerce, ICPF did not foresee the dramatic impact
that the Internet would have on the future export of service jobs to
developing countries. The West has been exporting manufacturing jobs in
large numbers for half a century, fuelling the growth of Japan, the East
Asia tigers, and more recently China; but until the emergence of the
information superhighway, the scope for export of service jobs was limited.
Technological development has changed that. As a result, business process
outsourcing has become one of the fastest growing sectors of the world
economy. As growth of the labour force slows in high-income countries, there
will be increasing pressure for export of service jobs. Public concern in
the West over the rapid growth of outsourcing is fuelled by the common
misconception that employment is a zero sum game. A recent authoritative
study of the impact of IT outsourcing found that the direct gains to the US
economy in the form of additional jobs in other fields, higher real wages,
higher real GDP growth, contained inflation and expanded exports far
outweigh the losses. While global IT software and service outsourcing
displaces some IT workers, total employment increases as the benefits ripple
through the economy. The net additional number of jobs in the USA added as a
result of outsourcing is projected to exceed 300,000 by 2008. They will be
generated across all sectors of the economy, most especially in
construction, transportation and utilities, education and health services,
wholesale trade, and financial services. Employment is not a zero sum game.

§Computerization: The exciting growth of ICT-based service exports by no
means exhausts the potential contribution of computers to growth of
employment opportunities. Computerization is not merely a field or sector of
commercial activity. The computer is an instrument and a catalyst that can
stimulate creation of employment and self-employment opportunities in
virtually every field – from farming, fishing and textile designing to lean
manufacturing, financial services, bio-informatics and genetic engineering.
While the application of computers has already been extended to all these
fields, there has not yet been a systematic effort to assess the employment
potential that can be tapped by fully extending and accelerating this
movement. The recent initiative in India to establish knowledge centres in
every Indian village by 2007 is one example of a pioneering effort to
harness ICT as a means to catalyze a whole range of on-farm and off-farm
rural activities, which will inevitably translate into more and higher
productivity and greater employment generation. These centres can be
utilized to deliver technological expertise to upgrade farm yields,
vocational training and education, purchasing and marketing information to
raise incomes. The experience of India also shows that bridging the digital
divide helps to bridge the gender divide in the area of knowledge and
skill-intensive work. As the construction of rural roads acts as a stimulus
to agricultural development of isolated communities by connecting them with
sources of inputs and markets in the outer world, ICT can be a catalyst for
stimulating the entire gamut of economic activities in rural communities
throughout the developing world. At the other end of the spectrum, ICT is
opening up unparalleled opportunities for self-employment and new business
creation for the educated. Today more than 50 per cent of American workers
utilize computers in their work. The growth of the World Wide Web has given
rise to on-line global markets in which individuals can bid for a broad
range of projects involving activities such as research, translation,
technical writing, proofreading, desktop publishing, and business
consulting. A new publication identifies a few hundred self-employment
opportunities of this kind. The future of work will offer increasing
opportunities for people throughout the world to match their specialized
knowledge and skills with specialized employment opportunities wherever they
may originate.

§Meeting the Skill Shortage:
Perhaps the single greatest opportunity for
employment growth lies in addressing the growing mismatch between the skills
of job seekers and the skills required for expanding economies. In both
industrial and developing countries, workers may be in surplus, but the
skills needed are in deficit. In the most prosperous nations, the deficit is
concentrated in high technology and professional sectors, in electronics,
biotechnology, health care, pharmacology, mathematics, marketing, financial
services, and the like. The adoption of new technologies even in traditional
occupations has resulted in a growing demand for higher skill levels in
these fields as well. Unemployment is highest among the least educated,
least skilled categories, such as machine operators, fabricators and
labourers. The poor are poor both because they have no assets and because
their time and labour have low or no economic value. Poverty persists
wherever the human resource is under-valued. To eradicate it, there is need
for a paradigm shift from unskilled to skilled work.

While educated unemployment is high in many developing
countries, in most cases the quality and relevance of the education to
employment opportunities is far from adequate. Here too, fully qualified
technical and professional workers are in short supply. There is even a
shortage for educated workers with a high level of general language and
communication skills to fill the job opportunities being created for
business process outsourcing. On an average, 50 per cent of firms surveyed
in a cross-section of developing countries report that skill shortages are a
serious constraint on their growth. Firms that adopt new technologies report
even more serious problems. In addition, the work force in many developing
countries also lacks advanced productive skills for agriculture and a broad
range of other basic vocations. The proportion of the labour force in the
20-24 age category that have undergone formal vocational training ranges
from a low of 5 per cent in countries such as India and 28 per cent in
Mexico to as high as 96 per cent in Korea. Vocational training systems need
to be substantially strengthened to close the gap, including training for
farmers, skilled crafts, self-employment and entrepreneurship. Advances in
multimedia technology now makes it possible to utilize computers, internet
and even television broadcasts to deliver a wide range of educational
information and vocational skills that otherwise would be unavailable or
very costly to disseminate. Upgrading the quality of education and enhancing
the skills of the work force will accelerate job creation the world over.
Distance education provides new opportunities for achieving the goal of
education for all within a span of a few years.

The Challenge and the
Opportunity

The problem of unemployment is of
relatively recent origin. The very idea of employment as opposed to
livelihood is a recent conception born of the Industrial Revolution. In
principle, every human being born creates at least the potential for his own
employment, because his very birth generates demand for additional products
and services and because each individual possesses the innate capacity to
acquire productive skills and creative knowledge capable of generating new
products and services to meet new and existing social needs. That is why, in
spite of rapid strides in the mechanization of agriculture and mass
production in manufacturing, the six-fold multiplication of human population
since 1800 has been accompanied by a more or less equivalent growth of
employment opportunities. The present job gap is small compared with the
enormous expansion of the labour force.

As people develop, their aspirations
rise and higher level needs emerge – needs for education, health care,
balanced diet, entertainment, travel and communication – multiplying demand
for new workers to provide them. Of course, there can be and are temporary
dislocations and disorientations, sometimes severe, resulting from the rapid
speed of social transformation that makes existing attitudes and skills
obsolescent within a lifetime or less and compels human beings to learn to
adapt faster and further than ever before in human history. This is the
challenge posed by the evolution of humanity from the physical to mental
stage, the flip side of the process that has given birth to all the
miraculous achievements of the past few hundred years. It is a challenge
posed to all humanity to expand our minds and acquire more flexible
attitudes, to learn and adapt faster, to convert the stress of change into
the joy of higher accomplishment.

The world that is emerging is one of
unprecedented opportunity to tackle the problem of unemployment that emerged
with the Industrial Revolution, the massive movement of people from the land
into the cities, massive migrations from one country and continent to
another in search of economic opportunities, and the lightning speed of
technological development that has eradicated traditional occupations while
spawning whole new types and fields of human activity. Thus, we are faced
with the paradox: an employment problem of unprecedented dimension coupled
with an opportunity of unprecedented magnitude; a problem that is not going
to be eliminated any time soon by the force of market mechanisms alone, but
one which can be dramatically diminished by the appropriate action of
governments around the world. Opportunities, strategies, instruments and
mechanisms are not lacking, provided there is a commitment and determination
of commensurate strength, a commitment that is best formulated and enshrined
by a recognition of employment as a fundamental human right supported by
constitutional guarantees, a commitment that must be translated into a
determination by all countries to implement a broad spectrum of available
strategies to address the issue today. Among these strategies, the greatest
necessity is for every country to continuously upgrade the quality, quantity
and, most importantly, relevance of educational and vocational training
programs to equip its citizens with the knowledge and skills needed for
productive engagement in a rapidly evolving world.

Food Security

The world produces more than
sufficient food to amply provide for all of humanity. Still, more than 800
million people spread throughout the developing world lack sufficient and
secure access to nutritious food and clean drinking water. Between 1990 and
2000, malnutrition declined from 21 per cent to 18 per cent of the
population of developing countries, but it actually increased marginally
among the least developed nations, particularly in Africa. Incidence of
malnutrition among children under five years of age remains severe in both
Africa and South Asia. But the problem is more complex than these numbers
suggest. Although India is considered a food surplus state, it is home to
the largest number of undernourished people in the world and access to a
balanced diet and clean drinking water is far below the basic requirements
for sound health.

Projections indicate that over the
next decade growth of the world’s food supply will be adequate to meet the
needs of all human beings. The UN Millennium Development Goal of halving the
number of human beings suffering from hunger and malnutrition between 1990
and 2015 is highly commendable, yet achieving it would still leave an
unconscionably large number of people without adequate food. More can and
must be done in the next decade to eradicate the scourge of hunger.

The problem of water scarcity is even
more pervasive and challenging. Studies indicate that by 2015 more than half
the world’s population – mostly in Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and
Northern China – will be living in countries that are ‘water-stressed’. In
the developing world, more than 80 per cent of the water is utilized for
agriculture, an unsustainable level that is depleting water tables,
increasing soil salinity and accelerating erosion. Although historically
water has often been a source of contention between communities, it has
never been the cause of an open inter-state conflict. However, nearly
one-half of the world’s land surface consists of river basins shared by more
than one country and more than 30 nations receive more than one-third of
their water from outside their borders. Therefore, the danger of
confrontation and conflict will escalate unless concerted measures are
implemented urgently. Water shortages occurring in combination with other
sources of tension — such as in the Middle East — will be particularly
worrisome.

Famine remains a persistent threat
precisely because the world no longer feels that threat to be severe.
India’s last major famine occurred in Bengal in 1943 during World War II.
Although the deficit in food production was only marginal that year, three
million died for lack of strong administrative intervention to improve
distribution. A marginal deficit could work havoc in the absence of an
efficient and equitable public distribution network. While there is no
scarcity of food in the world, there is also not a sufficiently organized
effort to promote food security, precisely because the sense of urgency is
lacking. Abundant opportunities exist to eradicate hunger, but in the
absence of a catastrophic event, serious effort is lacking. Famine attracts
media coverage, political and public attention, but chronic hunger does not.
With global food surpluses accumulating, an organized effort can ensure food
security for people everywhere.

The challenge of achieving food
security for all human beings is complex, for it depends on the interaction
between multiple factors – technological initiatives to produce sufficient
food; economic initiatives to stimulate sufficient employment opportunities
and increase purchasing power; political initiatives to maintain a peaceful
and stable environment, undisturbed by war or social unrest that can
interfere with food distribution; and administrative initiatives to provide
for those who are unable to provide for themselves due to poverty or during
times of emergency.

Peace, democracy, employment and food
security are mutually interdependent. The efforts proposed to promote peace,
democracy and employment generation will mitigate the problem of food
security to a considerable extent. In addition, Chapter Five of the
Commission’s report highlights direct interventions that are needed to
address the problem at the level of agricultural productivity, among which
the following are particularly relevant in the present context:

§Farm Productivity: The attraction of high technology service industries
should not blind us to the fact that a large section of humanity still
depends on agriculture as its main source of income and livelihood. Farm
productivity in these countries is typically less than a fourth or fifth the
average attained by other countries. Low agricultural productivity results
in high cost food, low rural incomes and limited employment opportunities,
both on farm and in downstream industries. As a revolution in agricultural
productivity provided the impetus for rapid industrialization in Britain and
later USA in the 19th Century, rapid modernization of agricultural
technology, a shift to commercial crops, improved linkages for credit,
marketing and processing can act as a catalyst for employment generation and
economic growth in many developing countries today. As some countries have
already proven, high productivity does not necessarily require large tracks
of land or high levels of mechanization, but it does require quality inputs,
adoption of advanced cultivation practices, efforts to improve the
productivity of water, access to credit, infrastructure for storage,
producer-oriented marketing and industries for processing.

§Information Empowerment:
The poor quality, slow speed and inadequate
reach of extension services is the bane of farming in many developing
countries. ICT can be harnessed to provide farmers with access to
state-of-the-art technical advice, quality inputs and market information.
The proper analysis and replenishment of soil nutrients by itself can double
or triple crop yields. Utilizing ICT, it is possible to deliver
custom-tailored instructions for soil improvement in a timely manner at low
cost. It can help to promote quality and trade literacy among farm women and
men.

§Organizational Linkages:
In much of the developing world, agriculture
suffers from intense fragmentation of land holdings among small and marginal
farmers. These farmers tend to have lower levels of education, poor access
to technology for upgrading productivity, less access to quality inputs and
credit, poor access to storage and processing facilities, and higher losses
due to post-harvest crop spoilage. Their problems are further aggravated by
environmental degradation due to soil erosion, deforestation and depletion
of water resources. Lack of effective organization and management is a
common denominator linking all these deficiencies. More effective forms of
organizations can eliminate or compensate for these deficiencies to a large
extent. For example, in India more than 10 million farmers are successfully
engaged in sugarcane cultivation, precisely because an established system of
contract farming provides them with access to technology, quality inputs,
credit and an assured market for their produce. India became the world
leader in milk production only because of the power of scale conferred on
small producers through the dairy cooperative movement. A similar
organization is presently lacking for most other crops. The successful
establishment of more than one million Self-Help Groups (SHGs) in India over
the past three years providing access to credit for 15 million small farmers
illustrates the power of organization. It is an indication that the phase of
society’s predominant dependence on government initiatives for development
is coming to a close. An organization combining the advantages of SHGs and
contract farming through the agency of an NGO or an agri-business centre
operated by farm and home science graduates or entrepreneurs can be
successfully extended to other crops, providing the technical knowledge and
essential inputs that small farmers need to raise productivity and farm
incomes.

§Crop Diversification: Eradicating hunger necessitates shifting production
from traditional crops to higher value added crops that can improve
nutrition, while generating higher on-farm incomes and greater off-farm
employment. Fruits and vegetables can remove micro-nutrient deficiencies,
while dairy and poultry can eliminate protein deficiencies. The soaring
price of petroleum, which has reached historical highs this year, presents
an additional opportunity for countries such as India to become large scale
producers and exporters of bio-fuels and bio-mass energy, thereby
substituting imported petroleum with lucrative markets, higher incomes and
greater employment opportunities for the rural population. Contract farming
arrangements between small producers and agri-business centres can stimulate
rapid development of this field. Ethanol, bio-diesel and bio-mass power from
agricultural produce could generate the equivalent of 15 million additional
employment opportunities in India, while raising rural incomes by US $10
billion annually.

§Water Conservation: Improving access to safe drinking water requires a
combination of public education and government action. In addition, the
rapid depletion of water resources can be mitigated to a large extent by
upgrading practices in agriculture, which is the single largest consumer of
water. Productivity of water in agriculture remains extremely low in most
developing countries. In India irrigation accounts for 80 per cent of total
water usage. A comparison of cotton cultivation under similar climatic
conditions in California and South India, both utilizing extensive methods
of irrigation, revealed that on average the Indian farmer consumes 35 times
more water per unit of cotton produced than his counter-part in California.
Water productivity can be enhanced by raising crop productivity as well as
by adoption of deep chiselling technologies that enhance water retention in
the soil. It can also be improved by shifting to more water efficient crops,
such as replacing sugarcane wherever possible with sugar beet, which
consumes 60 per cent less water per unit of sugar produced.

§Safety Nets: Long-term solution to the problem of food security
requires efforts that will make people food self-sufficient. But until those
efforts can be put in place and made effective, continued reliance will have
to be placed on public programmes such as India’s highly successful Mid-Day
Meal scheme for school children and Food for Work programs that combine
employment and food security. The traditional concept of Food for Work needs
to be enlarged to include skilled work related to human and social
development. A Global Food Guarantee scheme should be put in place, which
combines Food for Work and Employment Guarantee in a systematic manner.

Human Development

Development is a human process. It is
the result of human aspirations turned into action, human energies expressed
in thought and work, human imagination and creativity turned toward the
upliftment of life, the invention of processes and products to enhance human
productivity, the accumulation of knowledge and wisdom passed on from one
generation to another, the acquisition and perfection of skills transmitted
from parent to child, the conversion of talents into capacities, the pursuit
of ideals, an ever widening of attitudes, and the evolution of more complex
and productive forms of organization. As this evolutionary process unfolds,
each element of human personality -- physical skill, vital relationship,
mental understanding, spiritual values – is enhanced in a progression
without end, bringing with it greater material fruits, richer life
experience, and higher knowledge. The unfolding and flowering of the human
being is at once the source and the goal of development.

Thus, in all our efforts to elevate
human society, our primary endeavour must be to enhance these human
endowments and expand individual freedom of self-expression. Peace,
democracy, employment opportunities, food security, education, training,
access to information, cooperation, freedom of action and a spirit of
innovation are the essential conditions and means for this process to
advance. There was a time when humanity’s progress was primarily the result
of the collective efforts of the community, demanding and obtaining the
strict obedience and conformity of its individual members to preserve what
it had created and further the progress of the collective. That point is now
past. In the century now commencing, the individual human being must come
into his own as a free and creative force. The groundwork has been prepared
by the spread of democracy, human rights, universal education, gender and
social equality and, more recently, information empowerment. The power of
individual awakening is responsible for the revolution of rising
expectations that has fuelled unprecedented rates of growth and social
transformation during the past half century. That same power can be seen
among the talented youth of developing countries today, who are awakened to
the prospects of a better life and aspiring for higher accomplishment,
either at home or in ever increasing numbers abroad. The process of upward
social mobility that took off in the USA after the Civil War is now
occurring in countries around the globe.

One important expression of this
movement is the growing trend toward entrepreneurship and self-employment.
It is prompting more and more talented individuals to decline the security
and prestige of salaried employment to strike out on their own and seek
higher accomplishment by their own effort and merit. Training programs and
courses are needed to promote entrepreneurship at all levels of society –
from that of the craftsman and skilled industrial worker to the engineer and
the MBA. The mental outlook and psychological attitudes for entrepreneurship
should also be inculcated through the mainstream educational system. As
India’s Freedom Movement worked to awaken the population to the possibility
of independence from foreign rule and its Green Revolution worked to awaken
farmers to the possibilities of higher productivity, the future lies in
awakening each individual in society to his or her own greater human
potential.

Chapter Seven of the Commission’s
report examines some of the principal means at our disposal to enhance and
accelerate the development of these human capacities. It called for efforts
to re-examine our development experience over the past few hundred years in
order to arrive at a deeper and clearer understanding of the process and
principles that govern human evolution, individually and collectively. Since
the publication of the report in 1994, ICPF’s successor organization, the
International Center for Peace and Development, and The Mother’s Service
Society in collaboration with the World Academy of Art and Science have
worked to formulate a broader theoretical framework for understanding human
development. Strategies arising from this approach were presented at
international conferences co-sponsored with the Gorbachev Foundation in
Moscow and with the Noor al Hussein Foundation in Jordan, and were
effectively applied to stop hyperinflation in Yugoslavia. A full and
conscious application of strategies arising from this framework can help to
condense the period of transition of East European countries and the
take-off of less developed countries from decades into a few years.

From this perspective, the single most
important agent of human development is not the institutions of government
or those of private enterprise. It is the educational system that imparts to
future generations the accumulated knowledge, skill and capacity acquired in
the past. The quality of that education will determine the quality of the
human beings who build our future world. Until now, too much emphasis has
been placed on transfer of information from teacher to student, too little
on the development of thinking and critical faculties by the student. Too
much reliance has been placed on the capacity of the teacher to teach, too
little on the inherent natural capacity of human beings for self-motivated
learning and self-discovery.

It may be fair to say that the state
of our educational systems throughout the world is an accurate reflection of
the state of human development in different societies. In this context, the
UN Millennium Goals of achieving universal primary education and eliminating
gender disparities in primary and secondary education represent the bare
minimum commitment that every society must make to enhance the capacities of
its youth. The great Tamil poet, Subramanya Bharati, rightly emphasized that
nutrition and education are the two legs of a human being. Pre-school
education should receive as much attention as post-graduate education. At
the other end of the development spectrum, no society has yet developed the
knowledge and expertise to impart the best of what it has acquired to a
broad cross-section of its citizens. Few have been able to ignite the
aspiration for continuous learning and the capacity for original creativity
that are the most profound characteristics of human consciousness. Measured
in these terms, even the most developed nations still have a long way to go
and much that can be done to further the development of their people.

To sum up, 10 years ago when we
presented the report of the International Commission on Peace and Food, we
were optimistic that humankind will grasp the uncommon opportunities
provided by democratic systems of governance and technological and knowledge
revolutions for achieving a world without hunger and where every individual
has an opportunity for a productive and healthy life. The onward march of
technology is still in full swing, but the political commitment to foster
cooperative human security worldwide is yet to emerge. The Information Age
has given meaning and content to the concept of a global village. The
threats associated with climate change and biodiversity loss also underline
the fact that while humankind may be segregated by political frontiers, our
fates are intertwined ecologically. Economically also, islands of prosperity
cannot co-exist forever in the midst of oceans of poverty. Both
unsustainable lifestyles and unacceptable poverty must become features of
the past, if we are to curb the growing violence in the human heart. Ten
years after presentation of our report, we remain convinced that universal
health, harmony and happiness are still within our reach, if only we imbibe
the eternal truth contained in the following message of Lord Krishna
delivered on the battlefield of life called Kurukshetra: